The public's access to the Internet, as well as the amount of bandwidth for Internet users, increased greatly in the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. The available Internet bandwidth allowed for the streaming of both recorded audio and recorded video content to a user's home. Also, additional increase of Internet access was sparked by the rise of the smartphone and the ability for smartphones to access the Internet on-the-go. In 2005, YouTube™ began to offer Internet users the ability to upload, edit, view, rate, share and comment on a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video content. Examples of such content include video clips, television show clips, music videos, audio recordings, movie trailers, video blogs, short original videos, and educational videos. Within one year of its inception, YouTube™ reached 65 thousand daily video uploads, with 100 million daily views.
The first Internet live video streaming platform in the United States, aptly called Livestream, was launched in 2007. Livestream, as well as other nascent live video streaming platforms, were content agnostic, and over time Internet viewers desired more specialized, content-specific, and niche live video streaming platforms. To accommodate evolving viewer demand, various live video streaming platforms have launched since Livestream; examples of such more specialized platforms include Twitch.tv (a live video streaming platform for creative arts and gaming content, which launched in 2011), and musical.ly (a live video streaming platform designed for music video content, which launched in 2014).
Live video streaming platforms have also aimed to attract social network users, and social networking platforms have evolved to include live video streaming capabilities. For example, Twitch.tv includes social networking components, and in 2015 the social media platform Twitter acquired the live video streaming platform Periscope. Other social media platforms have followed suit, with both Facebook and Instagram implementing live video streaming capabilities into their mobile applications in 2016. The widespread use of smartphones enables users of these social media platforms to share live videos with their social network.